Palestinian shepherd Abu Shadad herds sheep near Jerusalem as the Jewish settlement known to Israelis as Har Homa and to Palestinians as Jabal Abu Ghneim is seen in the background April 25, 2012. (Ronen Zvulun/Reuters)

In an appearance before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on April 17, John Kerry became the first US official to put an expiration date on the two-state
solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Kerry stated not only that the window for two
states is closing, but also, notably, that the timeframe is shockingly short: "a year, year and a half to two years or it's over." Failing to mention what
is expected when this two-year window lapses, Kerry's words remain cryptic. But they echo a widely shared sentiment among world leaders, diplomats, and
pundits, from Ban Ki-moon to Thomas Friedman. Arguably, though, it is an attitude that plays into the hands of the adversaries of the principle of "two
states for two peoples" which President Obama reaffirmed in his rousing speech in Jerusalem. It is, moreover, false.

There is great urgency in bringing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a close, but not because facts on the ground create an irreversible reality.

If Kerry genuinely believes in the imminent demise of the two-state option, he must envisage dramatic geopolitical changes in the near future. Otherwise,
what might render a hitherto feasible arrangement defunct? While certain political, demographic, and regional developments may tip the scales against
partition, most observers pin the end of the two-state solution on the ever-expanding Israeli settlements. It is becoming increasingly common to identify a
looming red line beyond which the number of settlers or the extent of settlements will render an Israeli pullout obsolete.

The idea that the two-state solution is losing relevance in the face of growing settlement activity is hardly new. Its origins can be traced back to an
"irreversibility thesis" that Israeli intellectual Meron Benvenisti has been propounding for 30 years. Benvenisti is quoted in a New York Times
article from November 1982 claiming that Israel's "de facto annexation" of the West Bank sets the clock on five minutes to midnight as to dividing
historical Palestine. The Doomsday clock has been ticking ever since, but although it is evident that the settlements are the single most crucial obstacle
to peace, it is less clear why so many people consider their presence irreversible. For even the doomsayers cannot deny that the settlements are an
extremely costly venture which remains completely dependent on Israeli funding. Reel in the infrastructures, rescind the lavish benefits, provide
incentives and reparations for repatriated settlers, and the whole problem shrinks back to manageable proportions.

In a strange turn of events, the irreversibility thesis --for years the domain of pro-Palestinian supporters of the so-called one-state solution -- is
increasingly being espoused by the Israeli right. In a July 2012 New York Times op-ed, Dani Dayan,
chairman of the Yesha Council (the representative body of Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories), called Jewish settlements in all areas of the
Occupied Territories "an irreversible fact." Affirming growing disillusionment with the two-state solution as "wonderful news," Dayan urged the
international community to relinquish "its vain attempts to attain the unattainable two-state solution." Even prominent leaders of the liberal wing of the
Likud Party made similar comments; Reuven Rivlin, the former Speaker of the Knesset, has recently stated that "there can only be one-state between the
Jordon and the sea" and that "it is clear that the idea of partition has failed."

Ironically, the irreversibility thesis could not have been more opportune for the unsustainable settlement project. Realizing that political support is
infinitely stronger than landholding, settler leaders aimed from the get-go at what they called "settling the hearts" -- securing the empathy of the
general Israeli public. But while their territorial endeavor thrived, their support among Israelis never soared. Public opinion polls consistently show
that support for the two-state solution trumps support for the occupation and settlements. And so, having failed to muster support by undercutting the
desirability of partition, the settlers now question its feasibility.

It should be stressed that alarmism about the impending end of the two-state option is a self-fulfilling prophecy. All this talk of the closing window for
two states is encouraging settlers to play for time. If they can grab another hill or forestall an eviction of an illegal outpost, there will come a time
in which their untenable project becomes irrevocable simply by outlasting the patience and stamina of its opponents. The Israeli right doesn't really have
an endgame. So far they have not been able to come up with a plan to keep the Occupied Territories under Israeli control without abrogating the Jewish
nation-state, and they know that the vast majority of Israelis would disown the settlements in a heartbeat when the moment of truth arrives. From their
perspective, then, the permanent temporariness of the status quo is far superior to any possible resolution of the conflict, which is why they are
politically galvanized by the alleged downfall of the two-state solution.

There is great urgency in bringing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a close, but not because facts on the ground create an irreversible reality. The
conflict has to end because the occupation causes needless suffering and humiliation, and because peace and integration into the region is Israel's
paramount national interest. Reiterating the hackneyed formula on the closing of the window for peace stresses that urgency in a way that gratuitously
energizes proponents of the status quo and pushes peace further away. In fact, Kerry would be well-advised to drive home the message that the two-state
solution is alive and kicking, that a Palestinian state will be established even if another decade of pointless political maneuvering passes by, and above
all that the only real choice Israel faces is between pulling out of the Occupied Territories before the next cycle of violence erupts or, tragically,
right after.

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Should you drink more coffee? Should you take melatonin? Can you train yourself to need less sleep? A physician’s guide to sleep in a stressful age.

During residency, Iworked hospital shifts that could last 36 hours, without sleep, often without breaks of more than a few minutes. Even writing this now, it sounds to me like I’m bragging or laying claim to some fortitude of character. I can’t think of another type of self-injury that might be similarly lauded, except maybe binge drinking. Technically the shifts were 30 hours, the mandatory limit imposed by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, but we stayed longer because people kept getting sick. Being a doctor is supposed to be about putting other people’s needs before your own. Our job was to power through.

The shifts usually felt shorter than they were, because they were so hectic. There was always a new patient in the emergency room who needed to be admitted, or a staff member on the eighth floor (which was full of late-stage terminally ill people) who needed me to fill out a death certificate. Sleep deprivation manifested as bouts of anger and despair mixed in with some euphoria, along with other sensations I’ve not had before or since. I remember once sitting with the family of a patient in critical condition, discussing an advance directive—the terms defining what the patient would want done were his heart to stop, which seemed likely to happen at any minute. Would he want to have chest compressions, electrical shocks, a breathing tube? In the middle of this, I had to look straight down at the chart in my lap, because I was laughing. This was the least funny scenario possible. I was experiencing a physical reaction unrelated to anything I knew to be happening in my mind. There is a type of seizure, called a gelastic seizure, during which the seizing person appears to be laughing—but I don’t think that was it. I think it was plain old delirium. It was mortifying, though no one seemed to notice.

Why the ingrained expectation that women should desire to become parents is unhealthy

In 2008, Nebraska decriminalized child abandonment. The move was part of a "safe haven" law designed to address increased rates of infanticide in the state. Like other safe-haven laws, parents in Nebraska who felt unprepared to care for their babies could drop them off in a designated location without fear of arrest and prosecution. But legislators made a major logistical error: They failed to implement an age limitation for dropped-off children.

Within just weeks of the law passing, parents started dropping off their kids. But here's the rub: None of them were infants. A couple of months in, 36 children had been left in state hospitals and police stations. Twenty-two of the children were over 13 years old. A 51-year-old grandmother dropped off a 12-year-old boy. One father dropped off his entire family -- nine children from ages one to 17. Others drove from neighboring states to drop off their children once they heard that they could abandon them without repercussion.

His paranoid style paved the road for Trumpism. Now he fears what’s been unleashed.

Glenn Beck looks like the dad in a Disney movie. He’s earnest, geeky, pink, and slightly bulbous. His idea of salty language is bullcrap.

The atmosphere at Beck’s Mercury Studios, outside Dallas, is similarly soothing, provided you ignore the references to genocide and civilizational collapse. In October, when most commentators considered a Donald Trump presidency a remote possibility, I followed audience members onto the set of The Glenn Beck Program, which airs on Beck’s website, theblaze.com. On the way, we passed through a life-size replica of the Oval Office as it might look if inhabited by a President Beck, complete with a portrait of Ronald Reagan and a large Norman Rockwell print of a Boy Scout.

Since the end of World War II, the most crucial underpinning of freedom in the world has been the vigor of the advanced liberal democracies and the alliances that bound them together. Through the Cold War, the key multilateral anchors were NATO, the expanding European Union, and the U.S.-Japan security alliance. With the end of the Cold War and the expansion of NATO and the EU to virtually all of Central and Eastern Europe, liberal democracy seemed ascendant and secure as never before in history.

Under the shrewd and relentless assault of a resurgent Russian authoritarian state, all of this has come under strain with a speed and scope that few in the West have fully comprehended, and that puts the future of liberal democracy in the world squarely where Vladimir Putin wants it: in doubt and on the defensive.

The same part of the brain that allows us to step into the shoes of others also helps us restrain ourselves.

You’ve likely seen the video before: a stream of kids, confronted with a single, alluring marshmallow. If they can resist eating it for 15 minutes, they’ll get two. Some do. Others cave almost immediately.

This “Marshmallow Test,” first conducted in the 1960s, perfectly illustrates the ongoing war between impulsivity and self-control. The kids have to tamp down their immediate desires and focus on long-term goals—an ability that correlates with their later health, wealth, and academic success, and that is supposedly controlled by the front part of the brain. But a new study by Alexander Soutschek at the University of Zurich suggests that self-control is also influenced by another brain region—and one that casts this ability in a different light.

Modern slot machines develop an unbreakable hold on many players—some of whom wind up losing their jobs, their families, and even, as in the case of Scott Stevens, their lives.

On the morning of Monday, August 13, 2012, Scott Stevens loaded a brown hunting bag into his Jeep Grand Cherokee, then went to the master bedroom, where he hugged Stacy, his wife of 23 years. “I love you,” he told her.

Stacy thought that her husband was off to a job interview followed by an appointment with his therapist. Instead, he drove the 22 miles from their home in Steubenville, Ohio, to the Mountaineer Casino, just outside New Cumberland, West Virginia. He used the casino ATM to check his bank-account balance: $13,400. He walked across the casino floor to his favorite slot machine in the high-limit area: Triple Stars, a three-reel game that cost $10 a spin. Maybe this time it would pay out enough to save him.

“Well, you’re just special. You’re American,” remarked my colleague, smirking from across the coffee table. My other Finnish coworkers, from the school in Helsinki where I teach, nodded in agreement. They had just finished critiquing one of my habits, and they could see that I was on the defensive.

I threw my hands up and snapped, “You’re accusing me of being too friendly? Is that really such a bad thing?”

“Well, when I greet a colleague, I keep track,” she retorted, “so I don’t greet them again during the day!” Another chimed in, “That’s the same for me, too!”

Unbelievable, I thought. According to them, I’m too generous with my hellos.

When I told them I would do my best to greet them just once every day, they told me not to change my ways. They said they understood me. But the thing is, now that I’ve viewed myself from their perspective, I’m not sure I want to remain the same. Change isn’t a bad thing. And since moving to Finland two years ago, I’ve kicked a few bad American habits.

A professor of cognitive science argues that the world is nothing like the one we experience through our senses.

As we go about our daily lives, we tend to assume that our perceptions—sights, sounds, textures, tastes—are an accurate portrayal of the real world. Sure, when we stop and think about it—or when we find ourselves fooled by a perceptual illusion—we realize with a jolt that what we perceive is never the world directly, but rather our brain’s best guess at what that world is like, a kind of internal simulation of an external reality. Still, we bank on the fact that our simulation is a reasonably decent one. If it wasn’t, wouldn’t evolution have weeded us out by now? The true reality might be forever beyond our reach, but surely our senses give us at least an inkling of what it’s really like.

A report will be shared with lawmakers before Trump’s inauguration, a top advisor said Friday.

Updated at 2:20 p.m.

President Obama asked intelligence officials to perform a “full review” of election-related hacking this week, and plans will share a report of its findings with lawmakers before he leaves office on January 20, 2017.

Deputy White House Press Secretary Eric Schultz said Friday that the investigation will reach all the way back to 2008, and will examine patterns of “malicious cyber-activity timed to election cycles.” He emphasized that the White House is not questioning the results of the November election.

Asked whether a sweeping investigation could be completed in the time left in Obama’s final term—just six weeks—Schultz replied that intelligence agencies will work quickly, because the preparing the report is “a major priority for the president of the United States.”

Democrats who have struggled for years to sell the public on the Affordable Care Act are now confronting a far more urgent task: mobilizing a political coalition to save it.

Even as the party reels from last month’s election defeat, members of Congress, operatives, and liberal allies have turned to plotting a campaign against repealing the law that, they hope, will rival the Tea Party uprising of 2009 that nearly scuttled its passage in the first place. A group of progressive advocacy groups will announce on Friday a coordinated effort to protect the beneficiaries of the Affordable Care Act and stop Republicans from repealing the law without first identifying a plan to replace it.

They don’t have much time to fight back. Republicans on Capitol Hill plan to set repeal of Obamacare in motion as soon as the new Congress opens in January, and both the House and Senate could vote to wind down the law immediately after President-elect Donald Trump takes the oath of office on the 20th.